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Canada got the last hurrah at the Celebration of Light Saturday evening, closing the three-night event with a winning display. Canada was declared the winner of the event, with Brazil and China finishing second and third, respectively.

Photograph by: Ric Ernst
, VANCOUVER SUN

Easter vies with Valentine’s for the most chocolatey of days. And should you find a cache of good artisanal chocolate in your possession, well, maybe it deserves more than gulping and gobbling.

Maybe you need Eagranie Yuh, author of The Chocolate Tasting Kit, to show you how to be a chocolate connoisseur. (The kit contains a small book, flavour flash cards, and tasting notepads.)

Chocolate, she says, is one of the most complex foods on the planet.

“It’s more complex than wines and coffees and really up there in terms of the number of molecules responsible for flavour. There are 500 such possible molecules,” she says. “There’s tremendous complexity in flavour, aromas and depth of flavour.”

When she holds chocolate-tasting classes, like she did recently at Barbara-jo’s Books to Cooks, people think: “Oh my God. We’ll eat so much chocolate,” she says. But tastings involve small bits of chocolate representing different origins or brands or qualities. “Inevitably, people leave with a new-found appreciation of the breadth and depth and variety of chocolate and realize it can be taken as seriously as a wine tasting,” says Yuh. “Chocolate appreciation lags behind coffee and beer and tea, which people understand. But the idea of chocolate tasting is really coming along and tastings are sounding more like wine talk. It’s like understanding that wine is more than fermented grape juice, that grapes come from different places and different grapes have different characteristics.”

Until recently, it was thought there were three different types of cacao beans, but that’s changing quickly, says Yuh.

“With research going on about cacao genetics, they’re finding 20 separate genetic types. We understand grapes and where they come from, what they should taste like, but we don’t with cacao.”

There are myths and mystifications about chocolate, she says. At classes, people inevitably get the “look” that says they can’t find the word to describe what they’re tasting, she says. So she developed flavour flash cards to include in the Chocolate Tasting Kit.

Great. You’ve caught the “floral” notes, but is it orange blossom? Jasmine? Lavender? And “fruity” is OK, but how about raisin or strawberry or plum or coconut or grapefruit?

“It’s like the difference between a nursery rhyme and a symphony,” says Yuh. The connoisseur zeros in on the symphony of notes.

But, he says, milk chocolate has its place, too. He likes to use it in combination with certain ingredients like passion fruit and caramel. The trend is toward darker milk chocolates with higher percentages of chocolate to milk and sugar, he says.

Quality and complexity start at the bean. Most cacao beans are destined for the bulk market (grown for yield more than flavour) and only 10 to 30 per cent are “flavour” cacao or higher quality beans. All of it grows within 20 degrees above and below the equator.

Once removed from the cacao pods, beans are fermented in the sun.

“It develops the flavour precursors,” says Yuh, “and like with wine, bacteria and yeast convert sugars into a soup of acids and alcohols.”

From there, the beans are dried, roasted, winnowed (husk is removed), ground, conched (made into a satiny liquid) and tempered (melting, cooling, rewarming). Conching removes unpleasant flavours and holds onto desirable ones. If underconched it can taste harsh and acidic; if over-conched, it can taste flat and lifeless.

“Chocolate adopts up to six molecular arrangements, but only two are stable,” says Yuh. “Tempering coerces it into a stable arrangement and gives it shine, snap and meltability.”

To appreciate good chocolate, like wine, you use all your senses, she says. Smell, look, taste, feel and even listen, she says. Chocolate should be shiny and smooth. It should have a crisp, clean snap (unless it’s in a too-warm room). Good chocolate often has vanilla and spice aromas. It should smell pleasant, says Yuh.

Good chocolate usually has a nice long finish. Some flavours will hit with a bang. Others take a bit for the flavours to develop. The melt is ultrasmooth and luxurious.

“The best ones will melt and you can still taste the flavours changing. With the simple ones, once melted, the flavour’s gone.”

Some regions have characteristics. Madagascar beans she compares to “oboes and bassoons and an earthy flavour,” while Mexican beans are lighter, more flutes and violins.

“A great blend is better than a terrible single origin,” says Yuh. “But great blends are tricky. It has to be greater than the sum of its parts. The more ingredients, the harder it is to balance and it can start to do wacky things

And those percentages on a bar? It’s also not an indicator of quality. It simply shows the percentage of cacao to sugar. Seventy per cent means there’s 70 per cent cocoa powder and cocoa butter and the rest is sugar.

“The danger signs are coconut, palm and soybean oils, artificial flavours, emulsifiers, and vanillin (not vanilla), which is a byproduct of the pulp and paper industry,” she says. If the first ingredient is sugar, it’s not chocolate, it’s a candy bar, she says.

At the chocolate tasting, she passed around 100 per cent chocolate.

“It can blow out your palate,” she warned. I actually liked the earthy, blowsy taste, but thought it would work better in a savoury sauce with meats.

And need it be said? Yes, artisanal chocolate costs more (a good chocolate bar might cost $7 to $10), but first of all, a little goes a long way. Second, do you kvetch when you pay $10 for a wowzer glass of wine?

Do, however, taste thoughtfully.

“I find it disrespectful when people eat good chocolate without thinking,” says Yuh. “Considering the level of work that artisanal chocolatiers put into it, the research and development, the tweaking — take a moment and appreciate it.”

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